Exercise 3.2 Translation through yarn

The aims of this exercise were to continue to match colours to a source, but this time the source was an 'Old Master' painting and the method of rendering the colours was yarn wrapped around card, in order to extract and explore the colour palette of the painting.

My first questions were:

• Who exactly is an 'Old Master'? How is this defined?

• Which paintings can I choose from?

• Which should I choose?

My answers, after a bit of research were:

• Artists from the period of the Renaissance (about 1400s onwards), to roughly the 1800s. Quite a wide period to choose from then!

• This answer then led me to consider which particular artists were considered as Old Masters and which of their paintings appealed to me for this exercise.

• I did briefly worry about how my choice of painting would be viewed, but decided to dismiss this as irrelevant and choose an image that appealed to me, even if it could be viewed as hackneyed or clichéd.

Other more practical considerations were:

• Have I already got a 'good quality print or postcard' that I can use as a source?

• Or will I need to source these before I can start?

After initially considering Sandro Botticelli's Primavera and Birth of Venus, I settled on use Girl with a Pearl Earring, by Johannes Vermeer, dated c. 1665, and ordered a postcard to use as reference.

I love the striking quality of the portrait and the powerful gaze of its subject. The particular shades of the blues and yellows it contains I find uplifting, cheering and calming, while the luxurious bronze robe contrasts with the everyday white linen of the collar which lies next to it. I feel like I can almost feel the slightly crunchy texture of her headdress and the satiny sheen of her bronze robe.

What is she thinking, feeling, asking the artist and now the viewer?

I started started collecting yarns from my collection to see whether I had any suitable yarns:

Although I had some yarns in my collection which were a good match, I did not feel I had enough variety in terms of shades and textures, and I didn't have anything to match the blues of her headdress. So this necessitated a trip to my local fabric store, Abakhan, in Mostyn (highly recommended as they have a vast range of unusual fabrics and trims; https://www.abakhan.co.uk/ ). I also bought some mount board from Hobbycraft to wrap the yarns around and some fabric glue to attach them to the card.

This was my first attempt to match and wrap yarns to identify and highlight the colour palette in the painting. Here I have taken the painting as a whole, looked at the areas of dark and light and the relationship between the colours.

Close observation of the painting threw up some surprises: the bright orangey red of her lips and mouth really jump out; the yellow tones visible on the righthand cheek. The blue of her headdress was particularly difficult to match and I only had one reasonable match for this - the blue lacy braiding - so this was reused in several yarn wraps.

I felt that my first yarn wrap was a little busy and that perhaps I had tried to use too many yarns, so for my second yarn wrap I tried to pare this back a little, which I think was more successful than the first.

I tried to make connections between the colours and textures of the painting and the materials I chose to represent this in my yarn wrap:

• The prosaic white linen collar in the painting becomes a herringbone pattern cotton tape.

• The satiny sheen of the bronze robe is represented by the luxurious metallic bronze chiffon ribbon. Single and double layers of this ribbon represent the way the light hits this garment on her shoulder, creating different shades in the painting.

• The silk embroidery thread I chose to represent the highlights on her face, as I liked the way the colours changed down the length of the thread, and felt this evoked the soft and delicate texture of her face.

• The dark shadows between the back of her head and the 'tail' of the headdress became a midnight blue linen with a delicate sheen.

Finally I looked at a section of this painting, focusing on the textiles, and using a different range of smaller scale yarns:

In addition to the yarn wraps, I considered using other items to demonstrate the colour palette of the painting and thought this could be done with items of haberdashery such as coloured pins or safety pins. Then I settled on buttons as I have inherited a large collection and thought it would be possible to match most of the colours I could see. I thought it was interesting to abstract this idea of colour matching a step further to buttons, such a domestic team, each with its own story from its previous owner and original garment, now unknowable.

I kept a record of the yarns I bought and used in the yarn wraps for future reference. Costs varied from about 20p per metre up to about £2.00 per metre; many of the ribbons and trims were on sale.

What I have learnt:

• The fabric glue was only partially successful in attaching the fabric to the mount board, depending on the texture of the yarn: slippery ribbons were harder than matte fabrics such as felt. I sometimes used felt as an additional layer to sit over the top of the glued ends and keep them secure.

• Sometimes need to apply the 'less is more' strategy.

• I really enjoyed this exercise. It forced me to look much more closely at the painting and examine the colour combinations and juxtapositions found within it.